On the 21 and
22 August, the Northumberland Coast ranger team hosted the first ever Low
Newton BioBlitz. For 24 hours an
amazing team of volunteers, recorders and members of the public raced to count as many species as possible in the Low Newton area.
Divers
searched the seabed, fishermen emptied their lobster pots and volunteers worked
through the night to survey bat, moth and small mammal species. From rockpools to woodland to sand dunes, species lists were created from all the different habitats in the area.
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© National Trust
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Since then, with
the help of the Environmental Records Information Centre North East and
volunteer recorders, the ranger team have been busy collating the data and the results are
finally in, along with hundreds of brilliant photos.
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| Larinioides cornuta © Paula Lightfoot |
Over 939 individual
records were handed in, creating a whopping final count of 554 species. Among these were 70 bird species, 142 flowering plants,16 species of fish.
This Grey Chi moth was one of the 100 moth species found.
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| © National Trust |
A green shore crab shedding its shell was found in the rockpools along with 12 other
crustacean species.
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| © National Trust |
Common shrews a bank vole and this water shrew were all discovered in the small mammal traps.
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| © National Trust |
The ranger team would like to say a massive thank you to everyone that took part and helped to make the event a success. The data collected plays an important role in mapping species distribution and is vital to informing our conservation work on the coast.
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| We even found a lobster in the rockpools! © National Trust |
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